This is actually part of my weekly letter writing campaign. Canada signed onto the Canada US Safe Third Country Agreement in 2002 which basically means Americans cannot seek refugee status in Canada because wherever you land on the combined territory is where you seek asylum. This means because Americans set foot in America first they cannot seek refugee status in Canada under the legal agreement. The agreement has some room for "exceptions " but it takes a lot of looking into from legal scholarship and has held a risk of American diplomatic retaliation…

Rainbow Railroad ,a Canadian based queer refugee charity, and a number of legal civil rights action groups have been campaigning for the past two years to start the process. A number of us have been writing to our MPs but with a lot of the crisises Canada has been dealing with from economic shocks and diplomatic wheeling and dealing to gain greater economic and security independence after a crash out with the US it seems to be ranked low on the agenda.

We should do more… But we’re also going through a political alliance shift the likes of which would have seemed unthinkable five years ago. It’s a shit situation and nobody seems to want to draw more agro.

Which is fucking killing me cuz I have so many trans American friends and I just want them to be actually safe 😭

I think it could go kind of bad for the US if they don’t remember that US bases on a lot of foreign soil only exist as a matter of their host country’s consent. A lot of American hard power, intelligence and military reach is tied up in defense networks that are goodwill arrangements. You already hear talks of the 5 eyes not volunteering information to the US anymore, if they spark a conflict with NATO there’s bit just a lot of their facilities that are potentially forfeit.